Looking for a dot in the middle of the line or the elusive per-mille sign — and the iPhone keyboard offers no clue where to find them? Don’t be fooled: that humble keyboard is a treasure chest of hidden characters. Find out here how to find and insert special characters on the iPhone keyboard.
First, Little William Conquers the Written World
The quotation marks that look a bit like arrowheads and appear in French, Spanish and sometimes German texts have been around since the 16ᵗʰ century at least. A good one hundred years later, French homme des lettres Michel de Marolles traced them back to Guillaume Le Bé, son of the famous typographer Guillaume Le Bé.
The attribution is probably bogus, but the name has stuck; since then, the quotation marks have been known as guillemets — little Williams.
On an iPhone, you can, of course, type guillemets — and most any other special character:
How to Find and Type Hidden Special Characters on the iPhone Keyboard
Time needed: 2 minutes
To type special characters using the iOS keyboard on an iPhone:
- Position the text cursor where you want to insert the character.
Precision: Tap and hold the Space bar to move the cursor.
- Tap 123 on the keyboard.
Umlauts and other character variants: Umlaut characters and other modifications hide behind their corresponding letters; long-tap to access them.
Example: Tap and hold n, for example, to access ñ. - Find the first set of special characters (together with numbers) on the keyboard.
More characters: Some characters hide behind others on this keyboard; see below.
- Now tap #+= for more special characters.
Even more characters: Again, some special characters lurk behind others; see below.
- Tap any character to insert it.
Their word: Apple includes ample information on typing in the iPhone User Manual.
‘Ü’ and ‘ä’: How to Type Umlaut Characters on an iPhone
Characters not on the keyboard: The Best Tools for Unicode Character Lookup (to Copy and Paste)
Special Characters on the iPhone Keyboard Hiding Behind other Characters
| Key | Long-Tap Special Characters |
|---|---|
| 0 | ° (degree sign) |
| - | – — • (dash and dot) |
| / | \ (backslash) |
| $ | ₽ ¥ € ¢ £ ₩ (Pound, Euro, and other currencies) |
| & | § (section symbol) |
| " | « » „ “ ” (quotation marks, also inserted automatically) |
| . | … (ellipsis) |
| ? | ¿ (inverted, initial question mark) |
| ! | ¡ (inverted, initial exclamation mark) |
| ' | ` ‘ ’ (single quotation marks) |
Feeling special already?
Tips help fuel these email and tech how-tos.
| Key | Long-Tap Special Characters |
|---|---|
| % | ‰ (per mille) |
| = | ≈ ≠ (equality) |
Also on macOS: How to Insert the Per Mille Sign ( ‰ ) on a Mac
How to Find and Type Hidden Special Characters on the iPhone Keyboard: FAQ
Can I enter arbitrary Unicode characters?
Yes and no.
While an iPhone can produce most Unicode characters, neither do you get a dedicated Unicode keyboard (like you do on a Mac) nor is it possible to enter character using hex codes, for example.
To enter any Unicode character on iPhone:
- Enable the keyboard for the script and find the character on it or
- copy and paste the Unicode character from a site that lets you find characters by name and code.
(Tested with iOS 13–18 and 26; first published June 2021, last updated January 2026)